Yesterday, there was a bit of a furore over something quite odd: a Celtic team photograph without Odin Thiago Holm in it. What does this mean? Does it mean anything at all? Have players missed team photographs before due to illness, injury, or prior commitments? Are we reading too much into this? Or is it, in the end, much ado about nothing?
I’m not going to say it means nothing, because it could mean any number of things. But the most important conclusion we can probably draw is that the big guy should be looking elsewhere for his opportunities.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Even if Holm has some talent, it’s been clear from the start that he’s stumbled onto the wrong movie set and would have had to be exceptional to stand even a remote chance of succeeding at Celtic, given how the situation unfolded.
Let’s not beat around the bush. He is the poster boy for the Mark Lawwell transfer catastrophe—not because he’s not a good player, but because we don’t know if he is. He was hobbled right from the start by the circumstances of his signing. Holm was brought in during the limbo between Ange Postecoglou’s departure and Brendan Rodgers being hired.
He wasn’t a player signed off on by the previous regime, and he wasn’t brought in by the new one either. We still don’t know who greenlit the signing or why. But he was signed before we had a manager, before anyone at the club knew what the tactical plan was going to be, what the squad would look like, or whether he fit into the new boss’s plans.
He’s a sort of limbo signing—a player brought in just to have another body through the door. And it doesn’t matter how many people on the scouting team approved it, that should never have been done until it was clear an incoming manager could work with him. That was the start of what became a bizarre transfer window where it felt like all of the signings were made without the manager’s input or any plan for how they’d be used.
Holm’s signing was the first sign that something had gone very wrong with our transfer strategy. It was happening according to a blueprint set by someone other than the head coach. That is madness at any football club, and it was never going to be successful, especially not with a manager like Rodgers, who has very specific ideas about the type of player he wants.
This is not something that can be laid solely at Mark Lawwell’s door.
Rodgers has to take some responsibility here too, because he should never have agreed to work under those conditions in the first place.
It was obvious last season that Holm wasn’t part of the manager’s plans.
When we signed Paulo Bernardo, it became even clearer that he wasn’t going to be considered as part of the first-team squad. And the arrival of Luke McCowan delivered the final blow to any hope of him even being considered as a backup option. He simply doesn’t have a future at the club, and it rankles me that some have suggested it’s the manager’s job to develop a player who wasn’t his signing and who doesn’t fit into his system.
This cannot happen again. Signings like this are the sort of mistakes we cannot afford to repeat. One of the reasons I’m delighted we’ve brought in Paul Tisdale is that a real football man would never have allowed this to happen.
He would have spotted the pitfalls immediately and consulted with both the scouting department and whoever was pushing the deal. The obvious response would have been: why don’t we wait until we have a manager in place and let him decide?
In another time and place, we might have seen Odin Thiago Holm make it at Celtic. But he was hamstrung from the start by how and when he was signed, and he never stood a chance.
I suspect Holm will be one of the players leaving in the January window, and it will be the right decision, even if he only goes out on loan to get some regular football. I think he probably is a good player, and he might even be too good to be stuck in the stands—which is where he’ll be spending most of his time if he stays.
This deal was a mistake.
We should never have signed a player without a manager in the building. It was a complete waste of money and an example of someone overstepping their boundaries. The best thing Paul Tisdale brings to this club is a clear sense of what those boundaries are and what’s acceptable.
The days of the manager being second-guessed by people with no experience in the dugout thinking they can build a team are over.
If Odin Thiago Holm is remembered for anything at Celtic, it will be as a symbol of that lesson.
The ghost of ‘Sonny’ Lawwell still haunts the corridors of Parkhead then !